1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for controlling and monitoring of communication between customers and a company's customer service representatives. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for controlling, via a data network, the distribution of customer requests for assistance to various customer service representatives, and for monitoring of the communication between customers and customer service representatives via a voice network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Traditionally, calls by customers to a company's customer service center are not handled by a special system, but are typical telephone calls to one or more customer service telephone numbers designated by the company. The calls are answered by customer service representatives trained to address customers' questions and problems. To improve customer satisfaction some of the calls are monitored so that the performance of the customer service representatives may be evaluated. The monitoring is commonly performed by individuals specially trained to serve as mentors for the customer service representatives.
An increasing number of companies have established a plurality of remote customer service centers respectively located in different physical locations. For example, a company may have customer service centers in each of several countries. Each of the customer service centers may be dedicated to a particular function, such as sales or technical support, or may be dedicated to a particular geographical area, such as North America. Each customer service center typically has a separate telephone number. This approach to handling customer calls is problematic in several ways. First, a customer may not know the particular telephone number for the customer service center he is trying to reach. More importantly, the customer may not even know which of the company's customer service centers is appropriate for his particular needs. As a result, a customer must often make several telephone calls to various customer service centers before finding one with a customer service representative capable of assisting him. The problem is exacerbated when the customer is calling from another country and speaks another language. As the customer service center telephone numbers are generally toll-free, the above approach can be quite expensive for the company. In addition, a particular customer service center may have a high volume of calls with long waiting times for assistance, while another customer service center has a low volume of calls, and thus many available customer service representatives.
Another disadvantage of the standard approach to responding to customer requests for communication with customer service representatives is the difficulty of monitoring the customer service representatives located at remote customer service centers. The current approach of having one or more monitors at each customer service center is inefficient and expensive. Remote monitoring using conventional telephone features is an improvement over the previous approach, but it is still impractical since there is no way for the monitor to make a decision about which call to monitor other than by random selection of a particular customer service representative. Furthermore, with a standard remote monitoring scheme a monitor has no control over incoming calls from customers, making it impossible for the monitor to re-direct calls to other customer service centers in case of an emergency, such as a particular customer center loosing its telephone connection.